THE BRITISH government has warned loyalist paramilitaries that special powers to facilitate decommissioning will expire next summer unless significant progress is made on ridding Northern Ireland of UDA and UVF guns.
British direct-rule security minister Paul Goggins, who has responsibility for policing and justice pending an agreement to devolve them to Stormont, is piloting the special legislation through Westminster today.
This will give effect to the decommissioning body headed by Gen John de Chastelain and facilitate paramilitaries wishing to get rid of their weapons without fear of prosecution.
However, the government has warned its patience with the loyalists will run out after only six months if there is no progress.
Ministers, along with many others in the security field, are frustrated that more than 14 years after the loyalist ceasefires in October 1994 there has still not been any significant decommissioning.
A British government spokesman told The Irish Times that Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward will bring to an end the special measures which protect loyalist paramilitaries from prosecution while guns and explosives are disposed of.
The British move follows representation from the Police Federation, the main PSNI union, which wrote to Mr Woodward earlier this month.
“This will be the last time that the government will renew the Decommissioning Order,” the British spokesman said.
“The Secretary of State will also ask the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning to report to him in six months on the progress made towards loyalist decommissioning and if that progress is not significant, he will bring the decommissioning process to an end.”
Recent reports by the ceasefire monitor, established by the British and Irish governments, have continued to highlight the threat posed by dissident republicans and also by splintering of the UDA.
The main loyalist paramilitary groups called their ceasefires in 1994, claiming they felt “abject and true remorse” for the suffering caused by their campaigns.
However, progress on the weapons issue was described by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) as disappointing.
The IMC has recently warned that fragmentation of the UDA, with the so-called southeast Antrim brigade now virtually a self-contained paramilitary force in the area, made the challenge of weapons decommissioning even more difficult.
Terry Spence, chairman of the Police Federation, said the legislation should expire within weeks rather than 12 months.
“The fact is that loyalist paramilitaries have had 11 years to complete, never mind begin, decommissioning,” he said.
Mr Spence wrote to Mr Woodward after a meeting with him last month saying that “the British and Irish governments have, at various times over the past decade, been bluffed into renewing the legislation without seeing any reward for their patience”.